Coimbatore doctors treat alcoholic by inserting electrode into his brain

COIMBATORE: A hospital Coimbatore has performed deep brain stimulation, believed to be the first time in the country, to treat alcohol addiction.

Doctors at Kovai Medical Centre and Hospital have inserted a small electrode connected to a pacemaker into a deep part of the brain called nucleus accumbens. They say three weeks after the surgery, the patient, a severe alcoholic, is recovering well and has not requested for a sip of alcohol since then.

The patient, a businessman from Sathyamangalam, first came to the hospital five years ago for alcohol de-addiction treatment.

After attending many counselling sessions and getting admitting to Kasturba Gandhi de-addiction centre and TTK de-addiction centre in Chennai, and even being given medicines like Antabooze, he kept relapsing. In 2017 his family again approached doctors at KMCH, because he began having shivering in his hands, uncontrolled movement of his lips, memory loss and loss of sensation in his hands and legs.

That was when the neurosurgeons at the hospital, who had been performing deep brain stimulation surgeries to treat Parkinson’s disease and dystonia, considered the same method to treat the patient’s alcoholism. The procedure included creating a small opening in his brain and an opening below his shoulder.

“The three-hour procedure included placing a small 1 cm large electrode in the nucleus accumbens. The electrode is connected with a thin wire to the pacemaker which is placed beneath a patient’s shoulder,” said neurosurgeon, Dr S Arulselvan. “The pacemaker constantly sends electric signals to the electrode, which stimulates chemical secretion by the brain. Especially serotonin, which is responsible for giving the person a sense of well-being,” he said.

Doctors say studies in the US have shown an almost 70% success rate in the surgery, with the patients completely stopping craving or depending on alcohol.

“It was an FDA approached procedure in 2009 and it is being done often in the US. But in India, it was not done so far because of the prohibitive cost of the pacemaker,” said Dr Ganesan, specialist in functional neuro surgeries.